Why don't the French just read Forbes' list of bilionaires?

Steven Pearlstein, Business columnist for the Washington Post seems to have a singularly inept mind for understanding that Forbes Magazine's billionaires list, and free-market orthodoxy isn't The Truth on economy. That's worse than most real economists. After poofing the standard easy clichés about French strikes that the American visitor ensconced in the 16th arrondissement is wont to make, blah blah blah, he concludes with this tripe.

What's so galling about the French is that, in the name of equality and solidarity, they are well on their way to creating not only one of the least vibrant economies in the industrialized world, but also one of the least equitable...

...having declared, in effect, that markets cannot be trusted to generate socially and politically acceptable outcomes, the same government is now shocked to find that it doesn't have much credibility when it asks workers to trust markets when it comes to the terms of their employment.

This sort of calculated hypocrisy among the French political elite, which likes to "talk left, act right," has now completely undermined support for market capitalism. A telling poll released in January by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that only 36 percent of French respondents felt that "the free enterprise system and free market economy" is the best system. That's the lowest response from any of the 22 countries polled and compares with 59 percent in Italy, 65 percent in Germany, 66 percent in Britain and 71 percent in the United States.

Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that Forbes magazine's latest list of global billionaires includes only 14 from France, without a single new entry this year. Germany, a country not twice its size, has four times as many, while Britain, which is about the same size, has 24.

Indeed, when you ask French university students who is the Bill Gates of France, they look at you blankly. It's not simply that they can't name one. The bigger problem is that they can't imagine why it matters, or why that has anything to do with why they can't find a good job.

What does this suggest other than the assumption that a billionaire economy provides decent jobs? Look at the US, Steve, the conomy's great for billionaires, but utterly stinks for everyone else. French kids get this better than you. Bill gates = good? What moronism! The conclusion is that if the French center-right government played the similar game of indoctrinating chicanery that the American government does, students wouldn't be marching in the streets.

At least, this is the only conclusion one can gather from this meandering piece of journalistic worthlessness.